Posted
by
timothy
on Saturday September 10, 2011 @01:11AM
from the bad-childhoods-continue dept.

mask.of.sanity writes "An Australian blogger who blew the lid on emerging domain-name fraud campaigns has received death threats from the scammers. His blog and domain parking company are still being hit with a large distributed denial of service attack that has the death threats embedded as HTML links within its logs. Australia's government CERT team and the U.S. Secret Service (blog servers were hosted on U.S. soil) are pursuing the botnet's command and control servers. Ten days later, the victim is still being attacked and is fighting a cat-and-mouse game as IP address ranges change."

Unfortunately "hackers" is, and has been for at least the last 15 years, a term associated with "crackers". It's a shame when playful cleverness is being labelled organised crime whilst real crime in which people are being hurt and laws broken remains largely ignored by law enforcement. I wish politicians and police would come to their senses and realise that "cybercrime" and IRL crime are one and the same, and the only way you can fix it is by finding the perpetrators and slapping them with fines and jail

Fortunately, the hardware hacking community has worked toward making the name its own again, ensuring that the concept of a hacker as a knowledgeable, creative person who works with complex computer technology at least somewhat lurks in the minds of the educated public.

Fortunately, the hardware hacking community has worked toward making the name its own again, ensuring that the concept of a hacker as a knowledgeable, creative person who works with complex computer technology at least somewhat lurks in the minds of the educated public.

Hacker make things work, generally with either with a low budget, a high degree of creativity, simple elegance, or superfluous complexity. More for the satisfaction of being able to be it. Sometimes involving good-natured pranks, naivety or a need to take dissect things just to see how they work. However a death threat is the sort of malovelence far removed from a hacker's nature. Also hackers tend to be very strongly motivated by internal rewards (satisfaction at a job well done) rather than the external (money) as these scammers are.

Sadly, thats incorrect, there are cases where people have been tortured and kidnapped for messing with these criminals

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/08/hacker-reported/ [wired.com] is one such case, another i dont have the link for right now involved a reporters daughter being kidnapped, put on drugs and sent to work in a brothel for 5 years. The hacker con ruxcon in Australia had a talk on it last year, no country is safe when dealing with real criminals. They will find and kill you for disrupting their business.

Not really, many live in countries with weak extradition, or no laws against cyber crimes in the first place. Even when they commit a crime like kidnapping, all the inetnt and evidence is based on stuff that can't be investigated internationally... So they have years head start on people looking for your kid.

Many countries have special units designed to deal with these *issues*. Osama was dealt with by one from the US. If the problems draw the attention of certain parties from certain countries. The problem will be made to go away.

On the flip side of the issue, it is also possible for the community at large to end most of the current methods for doing what is done, but the will is not there to do the upgrades, modifications and administration to end it (systemically). So, as long as the general users and ad

But the reverse is also true they can also be found hunted down and eradicated fumigated and deleted from the record of humanity

Really? From the article:

In April, Miami Beach police busted a ring of Bulgarian nationals....

The Secret Service took over the Miami Beach case, and the four defendants were each released on a $100,000 cash and signature bond. Three, including alleged ringleader Nikolai Hristov Arabov, jumped bail and went on the lam last month.

That goes beyond stupidity and incompetence and possibly straight to collusion. And this isn't corruption in the ex-Soviet bloc. This is the Secret Service and our own court system.

But the reverse is also true they can also be found hunted down and eradicated fumigated and deleted from the record of humanity

Really? From the article:

In April, Miami Beach police busted a ring of Bulgarian nationals....

The Secret Service took over the Miami Beach case, and the four defendants were each released on a $100,000 cash and signature bond. Three, including alleged ringleader Nikolai Hristov Arabov, jumped bail and went on the lam last month.

That goes beyond stupidity and incompetence and possibly straight to collusion. And this isn't corruption in the ex-Soviet bloc. This is the Secret Service and our own court system.

And Bulgaria is even a member of the EU, which is essentially impotent against Bulgaria's state-sanctioned corruption and state-protected criminals. Forget getting the local police to track down the absconded defendants and forget about getting them extradited outside the EU[*] even if they are found.

As a member of the EU, Bulgaria is required to honor the European Arrest Warrant [wikipedia.org]. I don't know whether that could be helpful for an extradition outside the EU.

Except that if you DO live in a country that cares they now have uttering death threats which is a non-cyber crime to get you with. Scams are hard to prosecute... Death threats are easy.. They can tack on the scamming at sentencing as "unrepentant offender".

"So, naturalists observe, a flea
Has smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller still to bite 'em,
And so proceed ad infinitum."
Frankly, in this case, the "scammers" sound like they(by flooding domain park advertisers with false clicks) are making domain park advertising incrementally less attractive, so I find it hard to be too sad to see them. Anybody who collaborates with those scum deserves what they get. However, the botnet herders tend to be the ones cracking machines for their herds, so

There's nothing wrong with domain name parking. If you have no current use for a domain you've paid, you park it. Also, you could use the domain for other purposes than just for web - like email, game servers etc. There's internet out of the web too, you know.

I think OP was talking about people who buy domains with the closest Hamming distance to the name of a Fortune 500 company and *intend* to park them (or use them for brand damaging material) until the company in question coughs up with a few grand to buy the domain off the parkers.

Maybe, but I don't think that's what the person who's the subject of the story does, so if that's what he thought was meant, he misunderstood. The subject of the article appears to offer domain registration services to third parties, along with a system for managing adverts placed on the domains prior to web sites going live.

Maybe, but I don't think that's what the person who's the subject of the story does, so if that's what he thought was meant, he misunderstood. The subject of the article appears to offer domain registration services to third parties, along with a system for managing adverts placed on the domains prior to web sites going live.

Actually that is EXACTLY what the subject of the story "Michael Gilmour" does. What he does may be legal but I would rank him slightly above sewer scum. He buys up domains and parks advertising on them to milk money from unsuspecting search results and mistyped domain names.

That's incorrect and overly inflammatory. Parklogic serves as a middleman between advertiser feeds and domain owners who wish to display a parked page. He may also own domain names but his company serves as a parking platform beyond any of those personal domains.

They maintain the server infrastructure, negotiate contracts with advertiser feeds from Google, Yahoo, etc. Same with Whypark, Sedo and many others. As a matter of fact, Google offers the exact same service if you're willing to use their DNS.

And World of Warcraft magic swords aren't.. Hilarious. Both are lines of nothing in a database.

You may disagree that the owner of "cellphones.com" should profit from the domain

Of course I do. They're a useless leech on the system. If not for a court turning that into "property" it'd just be data in a DB and the community would point it where the community wanted.

The reason we think (in general) that property owners should be able to rent property is that it usually wouldn't be there (a house), or developed (a piece of property with access and sewer/power), etc. Simply giving the public

Sounds like you're unhappy about the situation. Out here in the real world it's called capitalism.

And I'd bet the you'd feel much differently if you owned a multi-million dollar domain like beautiful.com. But you can't because P&G registered it back in 1995 and has been using a worthless redirect on it ever since then. Since they're hurting society by hogging the domain, maybe if you ask nicely they'll transfer it to you at no charge?

You are incorrect, their primary business is BUYING up domains to park them, he OWNS hundreds of thousands of them, he has even stated publically he does this as "its better than realestate". He may also act as a middle man, but primarily he is a leech on the system that steals time from users with misleading links and search results. Even those that are using him as a middle man are hardly better,If you want to park a domain then park it, don't screw internet users over with garbage just to feather your po

1) Parked domains rarely show up in indexes. Google filters them heavily. The only way to get to one is through direct navigation. Like if someone wants to buy car parts, they type in "carparts.com". Then they click a link and get the result they were looking for. There's no "harm" or "screwing" involved unless the click was fraudulent. The domain owner has no control over that unless they're stupid enough to click it themselves. Then they get caught, have their parking account banned and the payment

As it happens, I do think all of those companies are pond scum offering a dubious service which exists solely to rip people off. Despite my objections, my employer just paid £800 to some scumbag via Sedo for a domain - specifically the company name! - that costed $30 to register.

The seller offered it for sale, your employer wanted it and obviously thought the price was fair enough. So they bought it. The profit margin is of no significance, only that the buyer and seller got what they wanted.

No different than any other transaction of goods or services in a capitalistic scenario.

Then that's simply buyer's remorse, same as overpaying for any product or service and regretting it later. Which is tough luck to them, they should have negotiated better or just picked one of the other 100 TLDs. Having said that, $1200 isn't unreasonable and is below par with average domain sales these days listed at dnjournal.com.

What you're really implying is that it was extortion which would be criminal. It's not, they could have simply registered the domain before the seller did.

"Domain parking", usually means tapping into search results of the big search engines and feeding people advertisements in place of the actual content they were looking for. This may be legal, but that doesn't make it "right".

In addition, people like Michael Gilmour get away with paying only a few cents for each domain and then buy them in the thousands when people forget to renew or let them expire, hoping to sell them back with a hefty profit.

In addition, people like Michael Gilmour get away with paying only a few cents for each domain and then buy them in the thousands when people forget to renew or let them expire, hoping to sell them back with a hefty profit.

In addition, people like Michael Gilmour get away with paying only a few cents for each domain and then buy them in the thousands when people forget to renew or let them expire, hoping to sell them back with a hefty profit.

And how does he do that?

He has a company that is listed as a "domain reseller" or a registrar, so he only has to pay the yearly fee to the top-level domain management, which is, for example, about USD 20 cents for.com domains.

There's quite large annual fees on top of that, though. And he won't get those prices unless he is actually registered registrar directly at ICANN. If he's just reselling, then it's close to the actual prices (at least $6-7 per domain).

There's quite large annual fees on top of that, though. And he won't get those prices unless he is actually registered registrar directly at ICANN. If he's just reselling, then it's close to the actual prices (at least $6-7 per domain).

Michael is the CEO of Simcast Media, an online platform built for a company's clients and their customers. Customers find more information about the companies they're interested in. Simcast is an accredited registrar of ICANN..

Wow, thanks for showing that you don't have a clue what you're talking about. Last I checked Verisign charged $7.34 per domain then there's the $0.18 ICANN fee. So that's $7.52 before the registrar even takes their own cut, and they too need to cover operating costs.

The costs are many orders of magnitude higher than the 20 cents that you claim.

Wow, thanks for showing that you don't have a clue what you're talking about. Last I checked Verisign charged $7.34 per domain then there's the $0.18 ICANN fee. So that's $7.52 before the registrar even takes their own cut, and they too need to cover operating costs.

The costs are many orders of magnitude higher than the 20 cents that you claim.

Verisign is a registrar, Michael Gilmour's company is also a registrar, they both only pay 18 cents to ICANN per domain, get it ?

There is a huge difference between a "registrar" and "registry". If a registrar charges $9 for a domain registration, they pay around $7.50 to the registry (Verisign) and ICANN. The $1.50 is the registrar's profit, no more. The $7.50 is used by the registry to maintain infrastructure for DNS, etc. So there is no way for a registrar to register a domain for 20 cents.

What you may be thinking of is "tasting". In that case the domain could be "returned" for a small fee after parking for a week or so. But

Domains are like real estate. You can buy them cheaply and sell them for inflated price later on.

What's wrong with that?

Like when you buy up all the concert tickets for a show?

Why not?People can buy as many tickets to the show as they like. I've purchased dozens of tickets to events, there's nothing wrong with purchasing things (that's the point of selling them). The transaction concerns only the parties involved, and no one else.

Why not? People can buy as many tickets to the show as they like. I've purchased dozens of tickets to events, there's nothing wrong with purchasing things (that's the point of selling them). The transaction concerns only the parties involved, and no one else.

There is nothing wrong with being a parasite, after all they existed before humans did.Yeah, I'm getting off your lawn right now.

in many countries buying up tickets to resell them is actually illegal now. There is a lot wrong with it morally as well, it is pure profiteering that does nothing more than fleece people of additional money, they are not providing a service, they are taking advantage of holes in the system by effecting preventing legitimate buyers buying from source and artificially inflating prices..

In Australia most event organisers will limit you to 10 or less tickets per transaction. The way to stop people getting around the restriction is to have a Terms & Conditions of sale. People who violate the terms can have a civil suit brought against them.

However going back to domains. There are no longer any restrictions on TLD registrations. Is it moral to register domains for investment? I would say, yes as it's just like buying real estate for investment. People don't seem to question the morality o

But that does not necessarily maximize profit for the selling venue, and for business, maximizing profit is an important consideration. In fact, it has been proven that selling all seats is a pretty strong indicator that the tickets were under priced. So, the question then becomes fair for who?

To be the same, imagine that your house ownership expires. You might get notice that this is about to happen, but the notice looks like junk mail and might not even arrive. Fake notices are sent all the time by scammers wanting to fool you into paying the wrong person. If you are on vacation or otherwise miss the legit notice, you might not pay in time. Your house is then quietly reposessed by the local authorities. Some jerk at the courthouse buys the house instantly. (he always does this) You find yoursel

By allowing a domain to expire you relinquish your owner ship of it. Just about every domain I have ever let expire has been registered the instant it dropped. There is nothing wrong with this because I let the domains expire. If someone else wants to register them; they have every right to do so. Domains need to expire, otherwise we would have an exponential growth of dead/abandoned domains that could never be recovered and no revenue stream to maintain their infrastructure. Currently between 60,000 and 70

There's nothing wrong with domain name parking. If you have no current use for a domain you've paid, you park it. Also, you could use the domain for other purposes than just for web - like email, game servers etc. There's internet out of the web too, you know.

He is not that sort of domain parker. He is someone that buys up domain names for generic terms and mistyped domain names and parks the domain with advertising to get ad traffic from searches and mispellings.

Why is the United States Secret Service involved? From what I remember, the USSS is involved in matters of dignitary protection and anti-counterfeiting operations. Are the scammers involved in either of these?

RTFA this wasn't simply some upset asshole in the Ukraine sending death threats, this was a pump and dump scam being uncovered, where they send a buttload of fake traffic to view the ads, and then run off.

If they can sue based on IP, why can't they get the names and addresses of everyone involved?

There's only one thing that will end this. Find every IP launching the attack and prosecute them for hacking, even if all they did was own an insecure system. You have to push the responsibility back on the people allowing the attacks. It's illegal to leave your car running attended because it's an attractive nuisance.

If they can sue based on IP, why can't they get the names and addresses of everyone involved?

FTFA:

Scammers would change their origin of attack to evade blocking and Gilmour would respond in kind.

In the last hour, the attacks have moved to Indonesia where some 28,000 unique IP addresses are attacking his sites every few minutes.

So you're suggesting he sues 28,000 indonesians? And then when the botnet operator switches to a different IP range, another few thousand people of some other nationality. And then another, and another. And you think that's going to work because...?

Maybe where you live it is. I can assure you it isn't where I am. Which is the problem: laws work differently in different countries. Sometimes even in different regions of the same country. The Internet is international. Even if some jurisdictions have laws that you can use against attacks like this, not all do. And that just means the attackers will end up working from those that don't.

So you're suggesting he sues 28,000 indonesians? And then when the botnet operator switches to a different IP range, another few thousand people of some other nationality. And then another, and another. And you think that's going to work because...?

I'm suggesting that the ISP in Indonesia disconnect those 28,000 IPs for criminal activity, check them for viruses and turn them back on after they are clean, billing those 28,000 criminals for cleaning up their illegal activities.

It'll work because when people realize their criminal negligence of having an insecure system attached to a network will result in something other than a slower computer, they'll take the bare minimum of security steps, making the world a better place. Why do you hate the world

As another respondent mentioned, if they are using "old" versions when the current ones are secure, it's still negligence. If they are on the current version and it's compromised, then prosecute the maker of the software.

These IP addresses that are now logged to have attacked this site's blog, might also have been used for clicking these ads. If these addresses are given to the advertising companies I see at least to possible steps to take:1) Block the IP addresses from generating ad-revenue. This should save them *some* money.2) Find out which ads has been vigorously "clicked" from these IP addresses and find out which company that gets paid for it. That would probably be a good starting point for an investigation.

Let's say you own "redcars.com" and have it parked with Google, Parklogic or other parking service. The PPC ads shown on the site are from Google or Yahoo ad feeds that were negotiated by the parking company. You get a portion of the revenue generated when a legitimate click occurs, the parking company gets some and the feed provider keeps the rest. If using Adsense for Domains then Google keeps the latter two cuts.

The scammers will offer you $1000 for your account at the parking company. You agree, tak

I know Michael personally, have read his blog for a couple years, and am familiar with his meta-parking service.

He's definitely one of the parking industry's most stand up guys. He's not a domain scammer, nor anything close to that. Advertisers love his service because he cuts off anyone with bad traffic. Now he's exposing the seedy underbelly of the parking industry... which of course seems to have pissed off some people.

The scammers make money by pounding advertisers' PPC links on parked pages and gett

Have to say, I don't think this guy will get much sympathy on/., even if he is exposing a whole different level of scum among scummers. There is, by definition, no such thing as legitimate traffic to a parked domain. Nobody wants to go there.

That's the most fucking asinine or exceedingly obtuse comment on this page yet. The threat doesn't go away when you turn the computer off. The damage of a death threat isn't in the symbols used to convey the message, but the intent it converts.

Too bad the general media don't get this idea. They are way to busy gazing at the medium is the message to understand that the medium is transitory.

The TP (Tea Party, or something for wiping you ass with) get this; they don't say anything that is explicitly racist - as an example -, but almost everything they say is inherently racist. Like a magician slipping a card, you can't pin him to what he did, but the end result is the same. It is way more McLuhan than McLuhan itself [ sorry, stolen from a ston